As Jesus was coming up out of the water, he saw heaven being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. (1:10)
According to the report in Mark's Gospel, there were three special happenings at the moment Jesus got baptized. First, heaven was torn open. Second, the Holy Spirit descended like a dove. The third, there was some hearings from heaven. Today's story is about the first happening.
It is said that heaven was torn open at that moment when Jesus was emerging out of the water after being soaked up. How on the earth was heaven divided? Is it possible for heaven to be torn open? When we could see the rays of the sun through the thick clouds, heaven looks like opening up, but the writer of Mark's Gospel did not seem to mean that kind of physical phenomenon. If you want to understand the expression of heaven being open, you should know first what heaven meant to the people in ancient times. According to the creation myth, on the second day God created heaven with dividing water from water. The gap between waters is a celestial sphere, that is heaven. If we follow this logic, before heaven was created, this world was full of water, and beyond heaven still water exists over there. In Noah's Big Flood, all the windows of heaven opened and water poured down through them. To the ancient people, heaven was such an unaccountable world that they could not help writing like that way.
The people in the New Testament age understood heaven as a hiding place of life. So they thought it was natural for God to be in heaven, and for Jesus to ascend to heaven. Before their eye the mystery of life was in accordance with the unreachable mystery of heaven. But today to the people who are boasting of very advanced biology and physics this kind of thoughts sounds very silly. However, that is not true. We are never more advanced than those. But rather in a sense that they relied themselves on mystery of life, they could be much more advanced spiritual people. Today our lives, destroying the mystery of life, are only being focused on the information of life, not looking at the mystery of life. Is it possible for us to enrich our lives in this way?
The description that heaven was being torn open when he came out of the water means that Jesus is the core of life. It does possibly mean that the mystery of life is opening up by Jesus. Every incident happened to Jesus mean heaven being torn open literally just like that expression. We get experiences of heaven being open through Jesus and put our fate on that. Heaven being open should happen right now at this moment in our daily lives. It means those life-opening experiences.
Lord, you are the way, the truth and the life. Through you I believe I got a life. Amen.
According to the report in Mark's Gospel, there were three special happenings at the moment Jesus got baptized. First, heaven was torn open. Second, the Holy Spirit descended like a dove. The third, there was some hearings from heaven. Today's story is about the first happening.
It is said that heaven was torn open at that moment when Jesus was emerging out of the water after being soaked up. How on the earth was heaven divided? Is it possible for heaven to be torn open? When we could see the rays of the sun through the thick clouds, heaven looks like opening up, but the writer of Mark's Gospel did not seem to mean that kind of physical phenomenon. If you want to understand the expression of heaven being open, you should know first what heaven meant to the people in ancient times. According to the creation myth, on the second day God created heaven with dividing water from water. The gap between waters is a celestial sphere, that is heaven. If we follow this logic, before heaven was created, this world was full of water, and beyond heaven still water exists over there. In Noah's Big Flood, all the windows of heaven opened and water poured down through them. To the ancient people, heaven was such an unaccountable world that they could not help writing like that way.
The people in the New Testament age understood heaven as a hiding place of life. So they thought it was natural for God to be in heaven, and for Jesus to ascend to heaven. Before their eye the mystery of life was in accordance with the unreachable mystery of heaven. But today to the people who are boasting of very advanced biology and physics this kind of thoughts sounds very silly. However, that is not true. We are never more advanced than those. But rather in a sense that they relied themselves on mystery of life, they could be much more advanced spiritual people. Today our lives, destroying the mystery of life, are only being focused on the information of life, not looking at the mystery of life. Is it possible for us to enrich our lives in this way?
The description that heaven was being torn open when he came out of the water means that Jesus is the core of life. It does possibly mean that the mystery of life is opening up by Jesus. Every incident happened to Jesus mean heaven being torn open literally just like that expression. We get experiences of heaven being open through Jesus and put our fate on that. Heaven being open should happen right now at this moment in our daily lives. It means those life-opening experiences.
Lord, you are the way, the truth and the life. Through you I believe I got a life. Amen.
1 comment:
Thanks for the informative post. This does appear to be a reference to the ancient cosmology and I appreciate you providing spiritual narrative to accompany the passage. God bless.
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